11:20 A.M. EDT
July 13th, 2018
Office of Bryce Larkin (DD(O), CIA)
Washington, D.C.
“Good Lord almighty,” Bryce whispered as he saw the pictures of Frank Mullins. “What the hell did she do?”
“She shot him in the crotch with a TASER, then barbecued him by using a stun gun on the metal plate in his face, and then she just beat the shit out of him until we showed up,” John Casey replied, with a small tinge of pride and satisfaction coming across in his voice.
“Is she alright?” Bryce asked with concern.
“Is she al- no, she’s not alright!” Casey practically exploded. “She was tortured for eighteen hours, zapped repeatedly, raped twice, and brutally killed a man! The only person she’ll even talk to right now is Malcolm Reynolds – don’t ask me why, I sure as hell don’t understand it.”
“Where are you right now?”
“We’re at St. Joseph’s Hospital in central Phoenix,” Casey said. “Sarah’s in the E.R. right now, being treated for the injuries she suffered during the rapes. Once she’s released from here, she’s going to be transferred across the street to Barrow’s Neurological Institute – they want to do a full workup on her, see just how much damage was done to her nervous system by being TASEd and stunned over a dozen times in an eighteen hour span.”
“Where is everybody else?”
“They’re all at the Nerd Herd safe house. I dropped Zoe Washburne and Jayne Cobb off there; I had Mal Reynolds stay with Sarah so that the hospital staff had some way of communicating with her.”
Bryce stopped for a moment, and looked at the pages of notes spread across his desk. “So let me see if I’ve got this straight,” he started. “I have a top level program director in questionable health on the eleventh floor of an office building in central Phoenix, along with a GSA employee, and seven civilians, five of whom are from 500 years in the future. In addition to that, I have the DD(I) of the CIA in a hospital with possible neurological injuries, the only person she will communicate with is another civilian from 500 years in the future, leaving a semi-retired NSA colonel as the only fully competent and able person to oversee this operation?”
Casey mulled it over for a moment. “Yep,” he responded. “That sounds about right.”
Bryce was silent for quite a while, and when he finally spoke, he said, “Jesus H. Christ. I knew I should’ve joined the circus.”
8:22 A.M. MST
Omaha Project Safe House
Nerd Herd Phoenix Corporate Center
2701 N. Central Avenue
Phoenix, Arizona
Chuck looked around the safe house and was struck by its sheer opulence for probably the tenth time in the last few hours. It had originally been designed as an executive office and residential suite for Leonard Shoen, the founder of U-Haul, just as the Nerd Herd Corporate Center had originally been the corporate headquarters for U-Haul, until the truck company had pulled up its roots and relocated to north Phoenix in 2015.
When the small, ragtag group had arrived at the safe house just over three hours earlier, Chuck had told Ellie about the events of the last several hours. She had been initially concerned over his heart attack, and then outraged over the fact that he would leap out of bed and go on a highly dangerous mission a few hours later. At the first twinge of pain Chuck felt, Ellie had jumped all over him, informing him that he was going to “sit your ass down and be quiet.”
Nerd Herd employees had set up rollaway beds for everybody to sleep on. Chuck had offered Devin and Ellie the king size bed in the bedroom, which they had readily accepted. Everybody was now asleep, though Devin had called his mother to let her know that everything was now okay and that they’d be home in a few hours. Of course, she had chewed on his ear for a good five minutes about how he’d called at 7:00 the night before, said there was a problem, and could she watch the kids, with no explanation, but as Devin said after hanging up, “Hey, if they couldn’t chew you out, what else would mothers do?”
Chuck was the only one still awake when Casey dropped Zoe and Jayne off. He had had two more rollaways set up for them, and now they were asleep as well. But Chuck couldn’t fall asleep. Despite having been up for more than twenty-four hours now, despite having had a minor heart attack, despite being utterly exhausted, he could not sleep.
Finally, at almost noon, he gave up. Taking the elevator down to the ground floor, he exited out to the parking garage. Picking the first Herder he saw, he climbed inside, fired it up, and exited the garage for the two minute drive to the hospital.
He walked into the lobby of St. Joseph’s, and handed his CIA ID card to the receptionist. “I need to see one of your patients, Sarah Walker,” he said.
She tapped a few keys, checked the computer records, and then said, “I’m sorry, but Ms. Walker is in a high security wing. She’s set for transfer to Barrow’s in two hours, and her doctor has given strict orders that she not be disturbed.”
Chuck looked at the ceiling and sighed. Reaching in his pocket, he pulled out his National Command Authority ID, the one with the black band and the words “by authorization of the President of the United States.” Handing that ID card to the receptionist he said, “I REALLY need to see Sarah Walker.”
She looked at the ID, back up at Chuck, and down at the ID again, her eyes growing a little wider with each shift in her gaze. Finally, she handed the ID back to Chuck, and simply said, “Room 486.”
Chuck did not go immediately to Sarah’s room. He stopped first at the hospital gift shop, where he found himself utterly frustrated by the lack of decent choices they had for sick people. Finally deciding on a small teddy bear that said, “I survived Phoenix” on its t-shirt, he headed upstairs.
When he entered room 486, he found Sarah awake, staring at the wall across from her blankly. Mal Reynolds sat next to her, holding her hand, looking utterly exhausted.
Sarah’s head turned as Chuck came into the room. A small smile crossed her lips. “Hi, Chuck,” she said softly.
Mal looked from Sarah to Chuck and back again in amazement. “You’re the first person other than me who she’s spoken to since we found her,” he said.
“I’m just special like that,” Chuck said.
“Yeah, you’re special alright,” Sarah deadpanned in a whisper. “Did you get me a ‘sorry you got the shit beat out of you’ present?”
“Well, I wouldn’t QUITE put it that way,” Chuck replied, “but… yes.”
He handed her the teddy bear. She looked at it, read the t-shirt, and laughed quietly. “Ironically appropriate,” she snarked. “I survived Phoenix. Bearly.”
“Oh, God,” Chuck groaned. “That’s just… that’s so bad words cannot describe it.”
Sarah smiled, a twinkle starting to appear in her eyes. “Mal,” she said, turning to him, “would you mind if Chuck and I talked in a private for a minute?”
“Not at all,” Mal said, standing. “Take all the time you need.”
As he exited the room, Chuck crossed to the chair he had been in and sat down. “So, we’ve all been trying to figure out why he was the only person you’d talk to,” he said.
“I’m not sure,” Sarah replied tiredly. “I think it’s because after they found me, he just held me for about fifteen minutes, and let me just cry and cry. I felt safe with him, and after all I’d been through, it was like my brain shut down and just wouldn’t let me talk to anybody but him.”
She paused. “But then, when you walked in the door… you’ve been the single most stable part of my life for the past eleven years, and seeing you, it was like a switch in my mind got reset, and I felt safe to talk to other people again. Or at least, to you. Casey could walk in the door, and for all I know, I might freak out.”
“He provokes that reaction in a lot of people,” Chuck said wryly.
He drew in a breath and let it back out slowly. “I suppose I should go back to the safe house,” he said. “If Ellie wakes up and finds me not there, I might be a dead man.”
Standing up, he said, “Do you want me to send Mal back in? Or do you want to be by yourself?”
“Send him back in, if you wouldn’t mind,” Sarah replied. “I mean, I feel okay right now, but when you walk out the door, I might go back to being scared to be alone, and it’d be nice to have somebody in here. Besides which, he’s pretty hot, and I enjoy having him around.”
She stopped suddenly, and Chuck raised his eyebrows, an impish grin forming on his face.
“Uh… I think that last bit was the morphine talking,” Sarah rationalized. “Do me a favor and keep that to yourself, would you?”
“It’s gonna cost you,” Chuck laughed as he went out the door.
Mal walked in the door a moment later, a puzzled look on his face.
“What did Chuck mean when he said that her royal highness wanted my fine ass back in the room?”
5:30 P.M. MST
Omaha Project Safe House
Phoenix, Arizona
“So, we were able to identify all the dead-cover Fulcrum agents using the information in Mullins’ PDA,” Casey said. “It looks like it’s safe for us to go back to Los Angeles.”
“Casey, it’s been one day,” Chuck protested. “How is that possible?”
“Your agents,” Casey replied. “We got the names out to your Omaha agents, they figured out where the Fulcrum folk were, and the FBI took them down right quick.”
Chuck shook his head. “If only we always had such efficiency.”
“Keep dreamin’, Chuckles,” Casey cracked. “Anyway, we can go back; however, Barrow’s Neurological Institute is insisting Sarah stays here for at least a week. I’m not too comfortable with leaving her here alone, so we need somebody to stay here with her.”
“I’ll stay,” Mal said immediately. He had been brought to the safe house when Sarah was taken over to Barrow’s.
“I was thinking Chuck, Morgan, or myself,” Casey replied. “A government person.”
“Does it really matter, though?” Mal asked. “It’s only five blocks from here to the hospital – it’s not like I’m going to get lost between here and there. You’ve got an entire agency office here – I’m sure you can spare an agent to make sure I don’t do something stupid.”
Casey looked at Chuck. Chuck shrugged noncommittally. Casey turned back to Mal. “Well,” he said, “it’s not ideal… but if you’re willing to do it, we’ve got the assets here to keep an eye on you, and that would keep the three of us free to keep an eye on the rest of your motley crew.”
An hour later, Chuck, Casey, Devin, Ellie, and the remainder of the Serenity crew were downstairs, loading a Suburban and a company Lincoln for the trip to the airport.
“Don’t you think it’s a little odd that Mal wanted to stay behind with her?” Casey asked nobody in particular.
“Not at all,” Zoe said. “Clearly you haven’t seen the looks he gives her when she isn’t watching.”
“Seriously?” Casey replied. “I haven’t seen anything at all.”
“That’s because you’re a man, Casey,” Ellie chided him. “Of course you wouldn’t notice it.”
“And of course,” Kaylee interjected, “even though she really saved herself, he’s the one that gave her a safe place to go to after they found her. As a result, her mind will perceive him as her big damn hero, so I don’t think she’ll mind either.”
“Mal’s her ‘big damn hero’?” Chuck asked in disbelief.
Zoe smiled. “Isn’t he just.”
